Thanks Fred, Mark
fred-da-trog said:
Roll call: Ogre, Fiona, Soaring Eagle, jilm, Mark R. and me. The weather wasn't too cold. Can't say it wasn't wet, though. Very wet. The climbs reminded me of a fish ladder. We were riding most the time in streams, sometimes 4-6" deep, but traction was excellent and very little mud.
It was cool that Jilm made the trek down to Redhills while some much more local people stayed at home and watch TV (Gary, Jim). And others who have bragged about how challenging Redhills is stayed home and dry (Joseph).
The rear shock on my Titus blew up on my last Hogan ride (on a lousy fireroad??). So I was on Vivian's bike which is a bit small for me. I missed my suspension, but missed my brakes even more, those Shimano Mechanical disks suck big time in the rain.
The rain wasn't bad at all, I expected to get dumped on but it was more of a steady drizzle for most of the ride. For about a third of the ride it was either barely sprinkling or not raining at all. Most of the water was just on the trails. We joked that there were three types of trails, upstream, downstream, and cross current. At one place for up about a half mile we were going upstream against a 4" deep steady current.
Creek crossings? More like transitions from downstream to crosscurrent back to upstream. Most of the creeks were 12-15' and 8-18" deep. But there were so many. Thank you Woolie Boolies!
We rode somewhere between 12-15 miles... the miles ar Redhills are always rough but the water on the trail added to it. It probably doesn't sound like a big ride unless you were there.
